Shhh! Or else...

Buried on page ten of Saturday's New York Times is a piece that should give pause to all who live in free societies. Actually, it should do more than give pause. It should freak us out a little.

It concerns the Cleveland Plain Dealer and their decision to not publish two articles for fear of legal retribution by the government. Robert D. McFadden of the Times writes "...the newspaper, acting on the advice of its lawyers, was withholding publication of two major investigative articles because they were based on illegally leaked documents and could lead to penalties against the paper and the jailing of reporters."

Illegally leaked? Hmmm...like the Pentagon Papers?

McFadden quoted the Plain Dealer editor, Doug Clifton, as saying the articles were "profoundly important" and of "significant interest to the public".

So here is where we are now: a major American newspaper has been spooked into silence by a government that fears an informed citizenry. Meanwhle, the Plain Dealer is so jumpy about the situation in which they find themselves, no one there has even mentioned what the articles are about.

I don't want to get into a not-since-Nixon rant but this is deeply alarming. The Miller/Cooper situation is casting a very long shadow.

What are the stories the Plain Dealer has spiked? How will we find out what's going on? Why did the leaker contact the Plain Dealer instead of Robert Novak? Nothing ever seems to happen to him.